Matteo Ristorante Italiano — Restaurant in Salt Lake City

Outstanding on so many levels. As an east coast transplant to Utah, I can easily state that Matteo rivals New York City dining hands down. We made reservations, arrived, and were promptly seated in the already busy dining room. We were a party of four and our dinner included appetizers, mains, wine, dessert, and cappuccino.

Our waiter Mirsad, was an educated character on the dishes, their ingredients, and the preparation of each. Additionally, he guided us on wine selection, and while I do not drink, the three others in our party were very impressed with his recommendation. As well, he has a beautiful signing voice which we were blessed to hear several times in our dining experience.

We started with a bread selection of the lightest focaccia accompanied by whipped seasoned butter. We later found out, the bread selection was made daily by the owner Matteo’s mother who, along with the remainder of the family, arrived from Italy within the last few months and all are part of the intricate staff that makes this gem run.

Our appetizers included the Polpette, Caesar Salad, Rossa Salad. The Polpette are meatballs and sausage in a red sauce with shavings of the most extraordinary parmigiano reggiano. The red sauce is a true measure of great Italian food, and we all went at it before even attempting to spear one of the perfect orbs on the plate. The pomodoro sauce had small chunks of tomato, and was light and fresh. It was simple as it should be, highlighting the pureness of the ingredients. The meatballs were soft and flavorful, and each had shavings of parmigiano reggiano that only complimented the perfectly seasoned meatballs. After the meatballs and accompanying sausage pieces were long gone, we took pieces of the homemade bread and sopped up the remaining sauce on the plate leaving only scarce streaks of red on a white plate.

The Rossa salad had three of my favorite things, beets, goat cheese, and a balsamic dressing. The Caesar salad had crisp romaine, croutons, more parmigiano reggiano. And like a true Caesar salad included anchovy filets that were flavorful and well balanced with the dressing, it was delicious.

Our main courses included a Tagliatelle and seafood special, a gnocchi with butternut squash purée, and Brasato a braised beef accompanied by carrots and a celery root puree. All were spot on and delicious.

The tagliatelle and Gnocchi were both fresh made, as evidenced by how light both were. Gnocchi can go wrong in so many ways, but not here. Each piece was lighter than the next and held the butternut squash purée so each piece had the perfect ratio in each bite.

I am partial to red meat and will often choose a braised beef if it on the menu, as I did with the Brasato. The meat was perfectly braised resulting in a flavorful and tender portion; no knife needed. The perfectly flavored cut dipped in the celery root purée was delightful to my palate, and easily was my favorite.

Our meal rounded out with cappuccino and a selection of desserts Including the lightest cheesecake and a Brownie Tiramisu.

Matteo is an extraordinary dining experience. And we were blessed to meet and talk with its namesake owner Matteo Sogne who has gotten it right. He believes in the best quality ingredients are the basis for great meals. He was humble in the receipt of compliments and only directed the accolades to his hard working staff, which only enamored us more.

Simply said, make a reservation, and be ready to have one of the best dining...

So let me preface this by saying the food was excellent, we had an appetizer, 2 pasta dishes, cocktail/wine, and a bread basket.....all were great, it was the overall dining experience that fell flat.

We came for our 9 year anniversary and made a reservation ahead of time. Our reserved table was inside, but my wife preferred patio seating as it was a beautiful evening, so that took a bit of extra time for a patio table to get setup and we ended up on a small table in the middle of the patio and a bit crowded by the larger outer edge tables, but we requested outside, so no big deal. We started with a cocktail and glass of wine and tried to start with an appetizer but were told we had to order it at the same time as our food.... odd, but no worries. We ordered sparkling water as well, not realizing it was $7 a bottle as it's not listed on the menu, but it paired well with the pasta, so no worries again.

My wife had some type of sediment in the bottom of her wine glass, which she didn't notice until close to finishing it.....we pointed it out to the server and he noted it was likely sediment from the wine but kindly offered to get her another glass, which I appreciated.....he shortly after came out with the same glass and said it was definitely wine sediment but he could still get her another glass, which she declined, which is good because he had already charged us for the 2nd glass which we had to ask him to remove from our check as we never got it. It seemed like a restaurant this nice would have offered to replace the wine free of charge given that there was no way of knowing the sediment in the glass was from the wine and it was only a $17 glass, especially for patrons celebrating their anniversary. We were also never offered bread service for our table and had to flag down our server a few times to ask for little things throughout our dining experience. It seemed like other tables were being checked on much more frequently, but that could be my own misperception.

Overall the food was great and the environment was nice, the service just felt off, which any regular night wouldn't be a big deal, but when spending $150 on an anniversary dinner, it just was a little bummer. My wife use to be a server in high-end dining establishments in Anchorage, AK for a number of years and she noted shortcomings in the service that she would've been disciplined for, but service is subjective in some ways, so maybe we were expecting too much given the special evening that was only significant to us as a couple. Probably wouldn't come back as there are many amazing restaurants in SLC, but also thought the food lived up to the expectations.

*update: the GM of the restaurant personally called me to discuss my experience and explained some of the shortcomings from their side and also listened to my concerns with our experience and acknowledged some of the training opportunities for newer staff. Top tier customer service, and will give this another chance next time...

I’m only going so far down on this review so that A) people will see this B) to balance out the fact that this restaurant has 78/79 in my opinion completely undeserved 5 star reviews.

I would much more trust the reviews on OpenTable, the leading of which says everything I could say in a simple comment of “for a similar price, Valter’s Osteria is much better”

I’m going to start by saying take this review with a grain of salt, as I dined here on Halloween, so the restaurant was much slower than usual.

We had the Burrata, I had the Lobster pasta, and my date had the gnocchi. The burrata was alright, under-salted but I won’t hold that against it, the focaccia it came with was very good, and the zucchini was well seasoned and a nice texture. I was severely disappointed with the lobster. It was overcooked and rubbery, which was made incredibly disappointing that based on the small amount of meat, I believe it was langostino, which is usually my favorite because of how tender it is. The pasta was similarly overcooked and starchy. Just a total disappointment for my meal. My date had the Gnocchi which looked amazing, apparently had a good texture but the flavors were just off, it sounds good on the menu but in actuality I think they browned the butter incorrectly and the whole dish was acrid. Overall for 30-40$ entrees you would expect something a lot better, especially if every review is a 5 stars. I don’t care that it was an incredibly slow night, being able to mess up as bad as they did is a bad sign for fast nights.

As far as atmosphere goes, in online pictures the establishment seems much dimmer than actuality, the lights were very bright and the restaurant had loud pop music playing. I actually enjoy a lot of the music I heard, but it just felt completely off coming from a nicer restaurant.

Lastly the service was easily the best part, the host was very friendly and talkative, the things he did for us he did quickly. Our server was very kind albeit not that knowledgeable on the menu, and said some things that seemed more like sales pitches than actual dining advice. One demerit is that I saw other tables were offered bread and we were not, not sure what happened there, there might have been an optional charge but I’m not going to bother to look.

My final complaint is that when presented the bill they brought out one of those electronic readers, which is usually fine but I was forced to tip my waiter in his presence, this is incredibly awkward don’t make people do that. Especially if you only allow the quick tipping options of 30%, 25%, and 22%! Its just absurd and quite frankly rude.

All in all I can not in good faith recommend going here unless they change their approach to the menu, there are just so many better options at and even below the...